TABLEAU goes vegan (sort of)

All we at ELV can think about every time we take a bite of, or contemplate, the mandatory vegan menus at each of the Wynn/Encore restaurants is: “I wonder what Steverino’s next girlfriend will do to the food?”

That’s the thing about love, it makes you do strange, out of character things.

Like making every restaurant in the hotel offer a vegan option to guests.

Instead of a good pastrami on rye. Which you still can’t find in a hotel run by guys who should know what one tastes like.

But let’s be fair. All of the Wynn/Encore chefs have busted their humps to impress their bosses’ significant other (and by extension, the boss), and the results at Tableau are darn tasty…even if you’d have to eat everything on the menu to make it through an idle afternoon.

We don’t, but if we were forced to eat this food, we know we could do a lot worse than Spero’s roasted beet salad (in which the beets could’ve been a tad more roasted), with haricot vert and a truffle vinaigrette (that could’ve used a touch more vinegar), or his avocado salad with jicama, tomato and agave-lime dressing (well nigh perfect), or his Napoleon of savory tofu, dressed with a mirepoix-like spicy ratatouille and fried eggplant ( as perfect and tasty as this food probably can get).

The entire vegan menu will run you $71, and we’re guessing within an hour you’re going to want/need to order it again.

So maybe it isn’t just about Steve being smitten.

As for ELV, he will continue to supplement his healthy habits with his unhealthy ones…like Spero’s drop dead delicious turbot with sauteed chanterelles over a pea puree, and a chocolate chip cookie souffle that is so good it should be illegal. Which is what vegans hope to do to a great pastrami on rye…which, we’re guessing, will now never find a home here.

Let’s see if Mr Curtas would write the same type of condescending review if he HAD to eat a vegan diet for health reasons. I do and believe me, I am not hungry at all. I know that tofu can taste like almost anything – it’s all in the preparation. If you freeze it and then thaw it it gets “meatier” in texture. Tofu itself doesn’t have flavor – the flavor comes from the sauce or marinade. And I’m not talking about those little white blobs floating in the miso soup in Chinese restaurants. So enough of the sneering (“as perfect and tasty as this food probably can get”). If you get white blobs of tofu for your meal in restaurants … that means the chef is thinking INSIDE the box.

As for “every restaurant in the hotel offer[ing] a vegan option to guests” … it’s about freaking time these chefs started thinking about plant-based meals. Anyone can throw a piece of meat on the grill and call it a day. But try devising an entree that’s more than a plate of steamed/grilled veggies… THAT takes talent. And until Steve (or his girlfriend) … frankly none of the chefs had any. Now I can finally eat in those restaurants.

From a business perspective in a poor economy, restaurants and caterers who choose not to market to vegan consumers do so at their own risk. I agree the number of vegans is small compared to those who would be content eating a meal with animal products. But what these *business people* perhaps have not considered is that the vegan community embraces good vegan food (read: NO STEAMED/GRILLED VEGGIE PLATES) with a *huge* amount of referral marketing via blogs and word of mouth. While the community is not large, our impact usually is. Word of mouth is the best advertising in the vegan community.

Thank you , I love to read about other vegansas it gives me the strength to continue. I have about a thousand vegetarian feeds in my google reader, but another can’t hurt!! I did manage to find a good lentil recipe here, but I’ll be sure to try yours too. Thanks!